Caught me hook, line, and sinker. I just finished reading Sascha Segan’s PC World article titled “Apple’s iPad Could Kill The Mac” and I felt it was necessary for my own sanity and piece of mind to deconstruct this article and really figure out why Sascha, a professed 24 -year Mac user, could arrive at such a wacky conclusion.
Let’s get right to the heart of this thing:
If [Apple] could do the Mac all over again, it would use the iPhone OS. Don’t think of the iPad as a big iPod touch. Think of it, rather, as the new Mac—a new mode of home-based computing that Apple hopes will bubble up through its product line.
I understand the thinking here: From the outset, Apple has always had a keen eye for user experience and has tried to keep that tightly controlled, but by “doing it all over again” and starting with such a simple (and, by proxy, limited) operating system, they would have alienated what I believe to be their most important demographic: the fanatics who swear by the Mac for it’s ease of use, excellent software libraries, and seamlessness. These fanatics are the ones convincing their family members to go out and get Macs, they’re also the ones purchasing newer models and operating systems every two to three years.
Compound all that to the fact that the iPad will be for only the most casual of uses in its current incarnation; it’s nearly impossible to accomplish any sort of real work due to the lack of multi-tasking (which I’m sure will inevitably arrive). I couldn’t imagine how frustrated I’d be if I was working on a text-heavy website and constantly had to save and quit my code editor to hop over to check an email from the client and then quit that to hop over into iWork to read the latest document they sent me. It would be maddening.
The Mac is an open platform, and the iPad is closed. Anyone can write and distribute PC or Mac software or compatible gadgets, without having to have them verified or approved. That’s created an incredible pace of innovation, though it has its downsides, too, such as the incredible pace of malware innovation.
He had to throw PC into the mix in order to safely cite “malware innovation” since as far as my experience goes, you can count on one hand the legitimate threats to OS X as a platform, half of which require the user to have admin rights and install compromised software.
Obviously, the iPhone ecosystem has flourished under Apple’s benign dictatorship. But the whole ecosystem is reliant on that dictatorship remaining benign. (And even now people who enjoy BitTorrent would argue that it isn’t benign at all.)
I’m not really sure where BitTorrent plays a part in this at all, but ok.
I’ll admit I’m fearful, uncertain, and doubtful. Apple has fallen in love with end-to-end experiences, and I don’t want anyone other than me to have the last word on what I can install on my own home computer.
Apple has always been in love with end-to-end experiences, and of course no one wants to be told what they can and can’t install on their own computers, which is precisely the reason why a desktop environment will be in Apple’s future for years to come. The sheer amount of incredible developers on the Mac platform in tandem with all of the innovations to OS X are the exact reasons why it has flourished so much in these past few years.
The iPad is just another device that will likely carry the fabled “halo effect” that the original iPods touted: an experience so rich created by Apple that it actually motivates users to purchase Apple computers, and iPhones, and iPods, and so forth and so on. It’s clear that Apple is making boatloads of money from the mobile computing space, but I’m inclined to believe them when they say that the iPad is that in-between device for people who already have a laptop and an iPhone, as opposed to being the successor to the desktop environment.
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